


The Getaway

by triggernometry



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Fae (Flight Rising), Gen, Guardian (Flight Rising), Mirror (Flight Rising)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 05:58:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16613231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggernometry/pseuds/triggernometry
Summary: Dannevang takes his Charge, Hootycreek, to the Rusting Shores so she can experience the element of her birth for the first time in decades. They both have feelings about it.





	The Getaway

The coach takes them as far as Waysign, the last real outpost of the Crinoline before the Rusting Shores. Dannevang collects their travel-bags from the coach and tips the driver while Hootycreek waits in the shade under the eaves of the outpost, her hood drawn up high enough to obscure all but the lowest part of her face. 

Dannevang sets Hootycreek’s bag down beside her, gives her a little wave to get her attention, and signs: _I'm going in to get supplies; want to come?_  
  
Hootycreek shakes her head. _Need air_ , she signs back. Dannevang can see her frills thrumming restlessly, sticking up through strategically-cut slats in her hood, but the interior of the coach _was_ stuffy so he just accepts her explanation at face value and nods.

Waysign is a squat enough place that he has to stoop to get through the door without beaning himself on the frame. It's a clean, if sparsely-appointed place. Surprisingly dust-free. The proprietor is a mirror of few words, bone-white where they aren't rubbed black with the grease of a blackthumb scavver. Dannevang has the vague impression of dark metal stitched up close to the skin under a dark leather vest, but doesn't stare. He buys some extra purification tablets and a few extra days' worth of dry rations – just in case.

He can afford it; the purse Hootycreek's father had pushed into his claws before they left Rachidian was heavy, is still heavy even with a handful of stops along the way, a generous tip to the coach driver, and it'll stay reasonably hefty even after this supply run.

 _Take care of her,_ the old fae had signed at him once Hootycreek and her mother had looked the other way. _Or else._

Dannevang adds another bag of dried locusts to the pile of goods on the counter, pays, and stuffs the supplies into his bag before heading back outside.

 _Ready?_ she asks. He nods.

Hootycreek hefts her bag over her shoulder, waving him off when he signs _Help?_ at her.

 _Ride?_ he tries.

 _Need to stretch my legs,_ she says.  
  
They head east, toward the Rusting Shores. Dannevang makes no comment when, not even a half-hour later, Hootycreek is definitely _not_ stretching her legs and is, in fact, hovering near-motionlessly beside him, her wings the only part of her moving as they make their way Shoreward. He definitely says nothing when she, another thirty minutes later, lands on his arm and climbs over his pauldrons to sit on his shoulders, claws hooked lightly against the skin of his back and neck.  
  
He thinks she drifts to sleep, at least for a little bit. She leans heavily against his neck, and he keeps one hand resting lightly against her side to catch her if she should lose balance and tumble off – a thing which she's never done, not even once, but old habits die hard.  

They make the Shores by midafternoon. He smells it before he sees it: the air is heavy with the tangy salt musk of the Sea. Somewhere, he can hear murkbottom gulls screeching at each other and underneath that, the restless susurrus of the waves pacing the shore. He crests a hill of Wasteland soil turning sandy on its eastern face and there it is: the purplish-blue bruise of the Sea of a Thousand Currents butting up against the red sand of the Rusting Shores.

He'd say the view fills him with a sense of homecoming, but that isn't right. Home is already with him, snoring softly on his shoulder.

“Creek,” he says softly. “We're here.” The wind blowing off the Shores, the crash of the waves, the scream of the gulls all join together to practically swallow his voice whole, but he knows she hears him. Her claws pull tight against his skin and she gives a full-body shudder against his neck.

“We good?” he asks. She doesn't reply, only hooks a hand around one of his horns and leans out over his shoulder, pointing with her free hand at the Shores. When he hesitates, trying to get a better look at her, she points with greater insistence. Her hand is visibly trembling. “Yeah, all right,” he says, and starts down the hill.

The sand crunches under his boots as he steps out onto the Shores. He stands some distance from the Sea for a minute, just taking in the view and trying to get a bead on the fae's emotional state.

She tugs at the fur trailing off his helmet and points at the Sea again. Dannevang walks right up to the wet line of the tide, feeling his boots sink with a grating squelch into the soaked sand. He hunkers down, letting the tide wash over the toes of his boots and soak the fur lining of his kilt. He pays it no mind. He'd walk right out into the Sea fully-clothed if he thought that'd please her.

She is still for a little while. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her staring, transfixed at the wine-dark line of the Sea stretching out before them to seemingly every corner of the world. The miasma's thin overhead, almost nonexistent now, reduced to fine sheets of greenish-yellow cloud turning grey-white and fluffy towards the horizon. The sun is so _bright_ out here – he'd almost forgotten the way it looks, the way it feels. He pulls his helmet off and balances it on one knee; his skin prickles as the salt breeze rubs sleekly against it like a fangar greeting him at the door.

Hootycreek shifts position on his back, moving from one shoulder to the other. She follows the arm he used to pull the helmet off and slowly, tentatively makes her way onto the sand below. She moves with unexpected quickness as soon as her bare feet touch sand, dropping her bag to one side and almost hurrying to meet the tide as it rolls in. The water rises up over her feet, over her legs, making her cloak float in ragged streamers behind her.

She reaches out to the incoming wave and, for a minute, looks for all the world like one embracing a long-lost parent.

He supposes she is, in a way.

Dannevang looks away, then. He's privy to nearly every thought and feeling Hootycreek has these days – signed or whispered, or inferred with a twitch of the frill or flick of the eye – but there's something about homecoming that is private, intimate, and not to be infringed upon without invitation. He looks up to the wispy miasma-clouds above, traces the flight of a murkbottom gull as it winds kite-like through the air.

He plucks Hootycreek's bag up and stands. He's got enough of the fae in his peripheral to know she hasn't been swept silently away by the tide. He walks back up the shore a little, beyond the range of the waves, and drops his rucksack with a muffled thump on the ground. He draws the waterproof tarp out and spreads it on the beach, weighing it down with his boots – he's been looking forward to going barefoot for a significant part of this trip, if he's honest – and their bags on one end and a conveniently located rock on the other.

Hootycreek makes her way back to him, her cloak heavy with seawater and her hood pushed back down over her shoulders. Her dark eyes are bright, almost aglow with excitement.

 _Beautiful, alive, powerful_ , she signs at him in rapid succession.

 _Wanna swim?_ he asks.

She doesn't answer right away. She looks at him, then back to the Sea behind her. Her frills move up and down rhythmically while the rest of her is stock-still; she's thinking it over carefully.

He laughs. “C'mon,” he says aloud. He tugs the buckle of his pauldrons loose, lets them fall with a heavy thud onto the tarp, and strips down to his skivvies. By the time he's kicked free of the last of his clothes, he finds Hootycreek's already yanked the cloak over her head and thrown it into a heap to one side.  
  
Race, she says.

Of course he accepts the challenge; of course he lets her win. She flaps like a felled butterfly into the waves ahead of him, and he feels his heart just about jump into his teeth at the strangest, most beautiful sound just barely audible over the rush of the Sea: Hootycreek is laughing.

She tucks her wings tight to her sides and dives eel-like beneath the water, and he lets himself sink below the surface to watch her. On land, her movements are stiff, ponderous, curiously weighted-down for someone barely heavier than a rambra calf. In the water, she's graceful, quick, almost fluid herself, darting circles around him before he can even bank one way or the other to catch up.

He's never seen her this happy before. It's mesmerising.

His focus is broken only by a sharp sting in his neck: his gills opening painfully, long-dried and half-forgotten after too long ashore in the Wasteland. He has a brief thrill of not-quite-fear at having forgotten how to breathe underwater, and then it comes back to him in a rush and he sputters, trailing a vortex of bubbles from his mouth. Hootycreek taps him gently on the shoulder and he turns.

 _I forgot too,_ she says, then gives him a thumbs up and a grin. Her teeth are dark and glassy; he'd say she's part maren, if he didn't know better. _Dive?_

He nods. She circles behind him, straddling his crest and holding tight to his horns. He dives, using great, powerful strokes of his wings to propel them both downward, into the purplish-blue depths.

The Sea swallows up light quickly, the farther down they go. He blinks a few times reflexively, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. In another moment, he can make out the trailing limbs of giant kelp rising from the floor below, the darting schools of fish and the coils of a startled squid that regards them with one large, disgruntled eye before propelling itself away into the dark nothing around them.

He catches up a stalk of red-green kelp and uses it to guide them down toward the sandy floor. Fish scatter, startled; a handful of warmouths eye Hootycreek up but eventually determine she's not worth the hassle. Plumes of rusty sand billow up from around Dannevang's feet as he touches down on the floor. Hootycreek detaches from him, kicks downward and cleaves to the sandy bottom.

They stay there a while, feeling the water moving around them, feeling free, for once, of the grating, omnipresent closeness of the Wasteland. Hootycreek stretches out along the seabed like a hainu pup and rolls, kicking up another plume of sand. She runs her claws over it, finding stray shards of shell and a few rocks bigger than a crystal grain which she turns over ponderously in her claws before tossing aside.

 _Let's stay here,_ she says after a while.

_Forever?_

_Forever._

_Your dad'll kill us_ , he says.

_No, he won't._

_Yeah, you're right,_ he says, grinning. _Just me._

He briefly loses sight of Hootycreek's face as the laugh escapes her in a veil of bubbles.


End file.
